In the time of goldenrod and jewelweed, when summer
has melded into autumn, the cardinal comes to Chesapeake Country.

A highly prized plant with clusters of scarlet fluted flowers on tall
graceful stems, the cardinal is a spectacular lobelia, the only red member
of its family. It is believed to be a survivor of the warm period that preceded
the glacial epoch, for no such color, due to intense sustained sunlight,
could have originated in our temperate zone. It was conceived in the Age
of Flowers, when flowers changed the world.

Loren Eisley wrote: "Somewhere in here, I think, as I poke seriously
at one particularly resistant seed case of grass, was once man himself."
That is what I feel when I enter the presence of the cardinal in some somnolent
little grotto where it has sought to keep its feet damp and its beautiful
red head crowned in sunlight.

Just such a place is a wild garden sequestered in deep woods near the
Bay, in a gully where wildflowers flock in all seasons. A gentle stream
idles there and ancient trees along the bank let in dappled sunlight. It
is a primeval pace where ghosts of millennia slumber. It is a perfect place
for a cardinal flower.

A friend took me there. She and her dog had discovered it years before.
She is a gifted naturalist, an herbalist who readily shares her knowledge
and expertise with others. Her sprawling dooryard is lush with wild plants
that wander in from the near woods to find refuge from progress. Like stray
kittens, they sense there a source of love and nourishment. And they thrive.

But she had yet to see a cardinal flower in the wild. And we made a pact
to return in late summer to the gully, so certain was I that the cardinal
would be there.

High summer came, cruel and hot. No rain fell. The wetlands withered,
and ticks swarmed the maze of steep deer trails that led down into the grotto.
Meanwhile, the forest wrapped the entrance to the secret garden in its dark
cloak as if to discourage trespassers.

Thus we abandoned our plan. I knew of other places, more accessible,
where the cardinal grows. We would go there, I said. But we didn't.

With September, the heat loosened its grip, star clematis twinkled whitely
beside the country lanes and covered the carnage of drought with cool fresh
green vines. And there came a phone call from my friend.

The cardinal had come to her. It had sprung suddenly from thick sword
and maiden-hair ferns beside her porch and grown unnoticed until its bright
beacon of red blossoms appeared. It had brought along its very own pollinator:
a single hummingbird, she said.